Tuesday, March 27, 2012

People Steal Meat From Lions

It's that time again! Spring has sprung and I'm ready to start daydreaming of Africa 2012. Now I'll shake off the dusty cobwebs and get back to the business of passing along African Lion conservation news, but first I have one more article I'd like to share with you.

I recently stumbled across this article from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (Netherlands) and found it interesting primarily because it really surprised me that the Maasai would steal a pride of lions' kill. I guess everyone has to eat ...

Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences found in 2008 that people were stealing meat from lions in Benoue national Park, Cameroon. They published one of the first scientific accounts of this phenomenon in the African Journal of Ecology in 2009. At the time it was concluded that the stealing of meat from lions is much more common in Africa than believed and has been part of a strategy of ancient man to obtain animal protein already thousands of years ago.

The few scientific publications on this topic show how difficult it is to find evidence. Recently a film crew from the BBC has succeeded to film the stealing of meat by Maasai warrors from a group of lions feeding on an Afgrican buffalo in Kenya. The short film shows the maasai warriors walking shoulder by shoulder towards the feeding lions and scaring them away from their prey and subsequently taking the meat. CML has a joint project on lion livestock conflicts in Amboseli national parks since 2007 with Kenya Widlife Service and the Leo foundation.